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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Skills Awards Challenge at The Peak

The Royal Club’s Skills Awards Programme (see here) is designed to improve young curler’s skills through a series of six awards. Some three hundred awards were achieved last year. The Royal Club intends to extend the Skills Awards Programme and encourage all rinks to offer the programme within their junior club structure. A Skills Awards Assessors Course is to be held at Murrayfield on Sunday, November 14.

A new initiative in connection with the Skills Awards took place this past Monday at The Peak, Stirling. The Skills Awards Challenge Competition involved new curlers and teams were made up of players to a maximum composition of ten points based on their skill award levels.

Ten teams from Elgin, Aberdeen, Perth, Greenock, Lockerbie and Dumfries competed in the inaugural event. The Royal Club's Development Manager, Judith McFarlane, was telling me about the event on Saturday. I detected she was a little apprehensive on how the new event would go. She had no need to worry. By all accounts it was a success, and hopefully will now become a regular fixture in the curling calendar.

Waterfront Junior Curling Club finished with two teams at the top of the table. Brandon McInnes, Angus Shearer, Cameron MacDonald and Rhona Marshall were the winning team, photo above.

Judith says, "All the participating juniors displayed excellent sportsmanship and were a credit to their clubs and rinks. Congratulations to all those who took part."

That's Olympian Jackie Lockhart on the left. Jackie's two children Kirsty and Scott were taking part, and she was helping on the ice to add up scores for the team challenges.

Kay Adams has a full report on the Royal Club website here, with more photos and descriptions of the other activities on the day.

Winners' photo is courtesy of John McGowan, Jackie's photo is courtesy of Tom Brydone.